


Tainted

by PoliticalPadmé (magnetgirl)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:14:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21693766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetgirl/pseuds/PoliticalPadm%C3%A9
Summary: Five times Orson Krennic regrets leaving the Empire and one time he is satisfied with the choice.
Relationships: Galen Erso/Orson Krennic, Jyn Erso & Orson Krennic
Comments: 6
Kudos: 42
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs Exchange 2019





	Tainted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lady_needless_litany](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_needless_litany/gifts).



# 1.

Orson Krennic hated Lah'mu on sight.

"We aren't even in the middle of nowhere, Galen. We're outside nowhere. Past nowhere. _Beyond_ nowhere."

"Yes, Orson," his friend answered with quiet bemusement. "It's remote. So we won't be found."

"It's uncivilized." The Ersos had some crazed idea they would live off the land, be farmers and naturalists. _Nature_ was entirely foreign to Krennic. He didn't belong on a backwards planet whose main export was mud. He didn't belong on the run. Galen and Lyra had each other, and their daughter, Orson was an extra appendage that didn't know, or particularly want to know, how to survive in the wilderness. He was in the way and it was absurd to imagine he wouldn't be. He'd all but decided to leave when the Imperials found them.

"Take Jyn," Galen directed, passing him a blaster and a transmitter. "Quickly."

Orson glanced at the child, staring up at her mother with solemn eyes as they said goodbye. He'd barely spoken to the girl in the months they'd been in hiding. Children were also entirely foreign to Krennic and this one seemed to _like_ the mud. "I can't - she should be with her mother. I don't know what to do with a six years old."

"Lyra will be right behind you," Galen ignored his protests. "Go to the tunnels. Keep her quiet." He clasped Krennic's shoulder, met his eyes, the air crisp with the intensity of the moment. "Keep her safe."

Orson frowned. "You will be right behind Lyra..." He didn't dare make it a question.

"That's the plan," she answered for her husband, hefting a bag of explosives. "Saw is set to extract," she informed both men as she passed Jyn into Krennic's arms. The whine of Imperial fighters drowned any response. The Ersos pushed him out of the homestead and he ran into the gray morning. 

# 2.

It was days before they were found. Jyn was hungry, cold, and scared. She clutched a doll in one hand, her mother's kyber crystal necklace in the other, and asked a hundred questions he couldn't answer.

"When will Mommy come?"

"Why do the bad guys want us?"

"Who is coming to pick us up?"

"Where's Daddy? I want Daddy."

Orson wanted Daddy, too. And he wanted a shower, a change of clothes, a gallon of caf, a beach vacation, a nanny for the girl, a pillow... it was a very long list of desires.

"You should sleep," he told her for the fiftieth time. She crawled into his lap.

"Are you sure they are coming?" Her lip trembled, her fingers were white around the doll. Krennic awkwardly dropped an arm around her shoulders.

"Yes," he answered with a conviction he didn't believe and a desperation he struggled to hide. If Galen was dead he was going to kill him. "Go to sleep."

The scrape of the door above the ladder woke them. At Saw Gerrerra's gesture Orson nudged Jyn to climb up the ladder and followed a few rungs behind.

"Daddy!" The girl ran to her father, slumped beside Gerrerra's ship. He grimaced when she threw her arms around his clearly injured body, but ignored the pain to return the embrace.

"Stardust," he whispered into her hair, and met Krennic's eyes as he joined them. "Thank you."

Orson didn't answer. He'd hated every minute spent with the child. It didn't seem right to accept praise.

"Where's Lyra?"

Galen's pained expression was all the answer he needed.

# 3.

The ship was somehow worse than the mud planet. It was cramped and colorless and constantly broken down. There were pockets of insurgents across the galaxy but Gerrerra wasn't popular and most of his contacts didn't want the added trouble of a child. None of the places they stopped were anywhere Orson wanted to stay in any case.

"Why aren't there any rebels based on Chandrila or Alderaan?" Somewhere with actual culture.

"There are," Galen answered, weary. "But we don't want them exposed." Krennic harrumphed. Erso pursed his lips. "What did you expect when you agreed to come with me?"

Orson asked himself this every day. He had been on his way up in the Empire. He didn't always agree with their ideology but he certainly missed the order of it all. And the comfort. Galen was a dreamer and he'd made him dream of a future that didn't require him to dirty his hands. A lie, he'd learned quickly following Gerrerra around. But a lie Erso wanted for his daughter. A lie, Krennic realized, he wished for her, too. He'd expected a noble cause, and he'd been naive. But now he was knee deep in it.

"Higher standards for caf," he answered with a grunt.

# 4.

"Jyn!" Krennic scrambled after the girl, his eyes darting around, checking the shadows for the enemy. "What are you doing?" _You insufferable child!_

Jyn was thirteen, had been his family, more or less, for more than half her life and still never listened to a word he said. He'd told her father she spent entirely too much time with Gerrerra and the other miscreants, and Galen agreed, but it was somehow always Orson's duty to reign her in and as a result she tended to see him as yet another authority to rebel against.

"It's better up here." They'd been tasked with setting explosives in an alleyway; they'd good intel the Imperials were transporting another shipment of crystal. But Jyn had scaled the wall and was wiring their bombs to the roof. "More damage."

He realized she meant to bring the whole building down. "People work in this street," he argued. "Some might live here. We're only meant to interrupt the supply run, not destroy the neighborhood."

"Why not?" Jyn scoffed. "They're Empire."

Orson pulled the explosive out of her hand. "You don't know that." She glared up at him. "People aren't just rebel or imperial, Jyn. Some of them are simply trying to survive this war." _Some of us._

Jyn huffed but grabbed her bag and headed to the stairway off the roof. Orson followed, and wondered not for the first time, when it had come to this. When he'd been recast as someone's least popular parent and the keeper of morality in a band of ... rebels. 

# 5.

Yavin was an improvement, and Mothma's rebels superior to Gerrerra's, too. They set Galen up with a lab, tragic by Imperial or Republic standards, but far and away better than the cargo bay on a decades old ship. And there was room enough for Jyn to run, and other young people to make her acquaintance. Orson remained an odd one out, but Galen was important and Jyn popular, and he was accepted for their sake. 

For seven years they worked steadily. Gathering intel, supplies, vehicles, soldiers, politicians. Building a coalition against the Empire. Krennic mainly kept to himself. He helped in the lab, and he'd oddly become Jyn's main confidant for personal matters, but as far as the Rebellion went, he was a silent observer. Then, a month before Jyn's twenty-first birthday, word came that what they'd feared the most had happened. The weapon Galen had been contracted to design, that Orson had pushed for and they'd fled to avoid, was built and would soon be operational.

The rebels were in a flurry, everyone shouting, arguing for action or patience, to retreat or strike first. Galen was bone-tired from running scenarios to combat or destroy the machine he'd never forgive himself creating. Jyn was assigned to retrieve the Imperial deserter who'd smuggled out the information and barely escaped with her life. And still the leadership squabbled.

"Krennic," Mon Mothma called one evening, her measured voice cutting through the din, and suddenly he was the center of attention in the overcrowded and too hot room. "Do you have anything to add?"

He frowned. "I'm not an engineer, ma'am."

Mothma lifted her chin. "But you understand the Empire."

Orson felt a hundred eyes on him, narrowing, judging, taking the measure of his soul and finding it weak. They knew he'd been a high ranking officer in the Imperial Navy, and more than a few believed he still might be. They'd never really wanted him to be a part of their planning sessions, and he'd never made an effort to dissuade them from excluding him. But two pairs of eyes stood out from the sea of derision and distrust. 

Galen was haunted. His soft brown eyes were deep with sorrow, his exhaustion pronounced. He had never pushed for Orson to do more, had never asked him to do anything other than leave, and when needed watch over the child.

The child who was now grown, strong and smart and angry, as well she should be for all she'd lived through. But her eyes held none of that as she met his gaze across the room. Instead she looked at him with hope, and trust, and even love.

Orson wet his lips, took a breath, and pointed at a light on the display. 

"Scarif. The Imperial database is housed on Scarif," and in case they worried his intel was old, "It's too big to move."

# 6.

It was hot in the throne room, with the entire company dressed in their best and crowded into lines to witness the medal ceremony. There was an old-fashioned feeling to the pomp and circumstance that left Krennic cold, but he couldn't begrudge the Rebellion their celebration. They'd been waiting twenty years to get this far. 

Jyn watched the proceedings with rapt attention and an expression Orson recognized as pining, though he couldn't quite tell which of the three on the dais her gooey eyes were focused on. He was secretly hoping for the princess, all told. She'd been raised properly. Of course he'd thought Jyn had already started something with that daft spy she'd been working with, or possibly the defector. Perhaps she planned to try them all. The girl had never stopped being a handful. He liked it that way.

Galen was watching him. "You should get a medal," he murmured and Krennic had to swallow a laugh. It was a ridiculous notion and not only because nine out of ten rebels still mistrusted him. He understood what his old friend was doing, and he appreciated it, but his life had changed course away from medals long ago.

"I don't care for acclaim," he answered, mostly meaning it, and Erso smiled.

"You've changed."

Krennic shrugged. His eyes drifted to the crystal that hung over Jyn's heart. The princess lifted her hands and applause filled the room.

"Thank you," Orson said, simply and quietly, as he raised his hands to join the clapping.

"Hm?"

"This." He gestured at the room, the crowd, the heroes and rebels, and the daughter who'd claimed him. "I would have died, small and alone." _Without you._

Galen reached over to clasp his hands. The ceremony devolved into a celebration that lasted long into the night. Just before dawn, half-drunk and half-dressed, Krennic realized he'd gladly return to the mud planet or the cramped ship or wherever he had to go, so long as he had his family with him. Fifteen years after he and the Ersos abandoned the Empire he finally understood why he'd agreed.


End file.
